My Journey from the Meeting Room to the Mission Field and How You Can Help
21 Years, 3 Deaths, and 1 Resurrection
Hey Friends!
I will be incredibly upfront and honest with you - no bait and switch!
$ This is unashamedly a fund-raising letter $
But! Before you hit the ‘ol delete button, please give it a read. I think you’ll be glad you did, even if you are not compelled to give. I pray that it will light you up for the most urgent and transformational work you could commit your hands and your heart to.
🎯 THE GREAT CO-MISSION ‼️
If you prefer the traditional deets of the work and vision - CLICK HERE!
It will include all you want to know about 2025 and more about 2026.
But if you want the real story, read on.
The Road to Domestic Missionary?
No one would have ever imagined that I’d be working at a church as a 30-year-old husband and father. I was raised in an environment where that would have been highly unlikely. And the amount of brokenness and shame I felt was so overwhelming at times, I barely wanted to exist.
However, in 2004, I found myself sitting in a Monday morning staff meeting at a healthy institutional church in a beautiful little town where I was serving as a college and young adult pastor. Two hours into the meeting, I had a striking revelation.
💥This is NOT what I was born to do!💥
As a matter of fact, the image that came to me as I held back the tears sitting around that conference table was a vision of lying on my deathbed, about to draw my last breath. I imagined looking back on my life, thinking about what I would be proud of, and realizing that if this were how I spent my years, I would die a miserable and unfulfilled soul. I would want to go back and claim a “mulligan,” a “do-over,” and rewind the mix tape 🎵 (sorry for the mixed metaphors, I couldn’t resist)!
It wasn’t that we were doing bad things at the church, but that I was doing the WRONG things. Not wrong for the church, or even wrong for the Kingdom of God, but wrong for me. Wrong for my “Original Design”. Misaligned with my unique CALLING.
He knit me together in my mother’s womb (Psalm 139) with everything I need to do the good works that he had planned in advance for me to do (Ephesians 2:10)
The most fruitfull and fulfilling life I can live is when I am doing THOSE works with THOSE divinely given resources! God, help me stay laser focused!
- Kevin E Beasley on Substack (kevinebeasley.com)
A couple of weeks later, I had a Sunday afternoon to kill, and my favorite time-killer involves a hammock, a shade tree, and a meaty book. That particular Sunday afternoon, it was the book Revolution by George Barna (here’s the LINK).
THAT WAS 21 YEARS AGO! 🤯
I READ THE ENTIRE 160 PAGES on that transformational time-killing Sunday afternoon hammock trip. I couldn’t stop. I was mesmerized. And not only was I mesmerized, I was eternally changed.
Here’s a quick Reader’s Digest version to save you a lazy Sunday afternoon!
The future of Christianity in America will not be centered in traditional churches but in what he calls “Revolutionaries”—believers who are passionate about following Jesus but often live out their faith outside the four walls of a local congregation. He describes these people as dissatisfied with what he sees as the institutional church’s lack of effectiveness in making disciples, and instead they seek authentic expressions of faith through intimate communities, house churches, family-centered discipleship, or even entirely new forms of gathering.
Turning the Page
After that Sunday afternoon marathon book tour, I knew what I had to do!
I didn’t have language for it, I didn’t have a strategy for it, I didn’t have a team for it, but I knew I couldn’t ignore it. And after several years of dragging Julie around the country, working with church plants and navigating chaos, the one question that was screaming back at me from the pages of that book was -
HOW WILL I EVER GET JULIE TO AGREE TO THIS ⁉️
Well, it took some hard work, but she eventually got there through prayer, counsel from elders, and time. And off we went to the mission field, although it was just 8 miles away to Auburn, Alabama. And the birth of CONVERGE auburn ensued.
I will never forget my first follower into that adventure. I was wrapping up my Master’s degree in ministerial leadership and was spending many late-night hours at the Auburn University library on research and writing. I was leaving at 2 A.M. one morning, and as I left the lobby, I looked down and saw some copies of The Plainsman, Auburn’s student newspaper. I never picked that thing up because of its super liberal bent, but that early morning - you guessed it.
February 1st, 2027 Edition of the Auburn Plainsman - Auburn, Alabama.
“Great Faith Brings Great Reward”
I flipped the newspaper open, and my eyes immediately landed on a very unlikely article to find in The Plainsman. It was titled “Taking the Adventures Faith Gives,” and it was the tap-on-the-shoulder I needed to know that I wasn’t a mad lunatic trying to pioneer organic decentralized disciple-making in the Belt Buckle of cultural Christianity in the United States!
After reading that article, I set it on my desk and kept looking at it. I went to Plainsman.com, grabbed an email address, and shot out a plea. Bethany eventually decided to stay in Auburn and help us launch a dream that would lead to the pathway of the rest of our lives. She became our first disciple and eventually met her husband and married in our community.
Don’t get me wrong! It has not been easy! As a matter of fact, it’s been the most difficult challenge of my life! Ups and downs, ins and outs, victories and defeats have marked the story. Still, I am more than convinced that heaven and earth are closer to what God envisioned they would be as a result of trusting, following, believing, and wrestling alongside that early leadership team and visionary faith community.
The Cult Leader Years
South-central Alabama. Rural southern culture. 100+ year old legacy churches. The epitome of the Old South and traditionalist faith experience.
In that context, we found ourselves in a historic home housing some Ragamuffin disciples with a homosexual recovery support group on North Gay Street (you can’t make this stuff up)! We didn’t really know what we were doing. We still didn’t have language for it. Virtually no one was writing about it. But we began to learn what it means to experience Simple Church life!
Misunderstood would be an understatement. I remember a prominent ministry leader at Auburn University telling some of his students not to come to our gathering because we were a cult and were operating outside the lines of biblical ministry. I have wrestled with the rejection of more pastors than I care to remember. But somehow I survived the “cult” years, although I still sometimes feel caught off-guard and pulled off mission trying to justify what God has called us to do.
Which can be very frustrating and discouraging!
A year from hell, a crushing implosion, and subsequent years of confusion and brokenness followed as I walked through trying to figure it out. I was trying to help my spiritual mentors understand what I saw in my head, but couldn’t say with my mouth. I was finishing my degree, navigating a rag-tag ministry, trying to sell our home and move to our mission field (11 months on the market). Julie was 8 months pregnant, and I was battling the demons on the inside that came from a shameful and broken childhood. And then my dad was killed in a car accident on his way to help us move into our new home.
⚡️ I CRASHED! ⚡️
I can’t really explain it, but I felt like I died for a season. I recall sitting in a chair in my living room for hours at a time, just staring at the wall. I was so numb I couldn’t get a thought to come. No prayer. No joy. No curiosity. No motivation. I was STUCK. For six months, I was absent as Julie virtually single-mom-ed our three kiddos at the time.
The Slow Grind of A Miserable Death
And that led to the slow death of that ministry. In the end, it was as if it just started, with Dave and Bethany by our side (literally - they bought the 🏠 house next door!). But the only difference was that it was on the other side of the life cycle, and I was hanging on for dear life. 2008 came, and housing markets crumbled, and people couldn’t give like they could before. It forced me to trust God for a new season.
This era was followed by 10 years of trying to run a missional business that never really provided what we needed to make life work. Oh, it had a mission. We saw people come to Jesus. We prayed for broken people. But my family struggled at the hands of my efforts to make a business work in a small town during recessionary years.
And my heart wandered. Not away from God, but away from vision. Away from what it longed for and what had driven me to leave the comfy church gig where I could have lived and died had I not followed the adventurous call of Jesus into “GREAT FAITH THAT BRINGS GREAT REWARD,” as Bethany said so well.
COVID Resurrection
Ten years!
A decade of running that business. About 3,650 days of scratching and clawing for purpose and provision. Hoping beyond hope that I was walking in the good works that He prepared in advance for the Beasleys. The business was growing, but life was moving faster, and years 8 and 9 couldn’t keep up. I painfully gave up the ghost of that business in 2019. It was one of the most excruciating moments of my life, the moment I let go. I loved that business. But I couldn’t save it!
Then off to Tennessee with family in tow and faith in front. Next stop was a fast and furious start-up company with one of my best buddies, Peter Goodwin, whom I actually met one week before my dad’s death, a year of pounding it out at Groove, and then March 2020 arrived. You probably know that date well.
The very first week COVID was a thing, I was exposed. Julie was 7 months pregnant with our fifth child, and I was determined not to sit in an empty bedroom for 10 days. Spoiler alert! The pregnant woman won (as usual). I saddled up for ten days of what I expected to be living hell with four bedroom walls squeezing in on me by the hour. If you know the speed at which I run, you’ll understand!
Three days in, I was praying and seeking the Lord, and I asked Him a simple question.
“If you were going to incarnate yourself again in Spring Hill, Tennessee, how would you reach the city?”
That was it. A simple question, and then I listened.
He laid out an obvious and strategic pathway, and I grabbed a pen and paper to start drawing diagrams and crafting a vision. Three answers from Him.
Multi-generational organic discipleship multiplication (hmm. that one sounded familiar)
Activate the non-profits not just to serve well, but to introduce eternity into their service to broken and needy people.
Inspire and encourage the local business leaders to invest deeply into the advancement of the Good News in the places where they live and work.
Off to the races! 🏃🏼➡️🏃🏽➡️🏃🏿➡️
The death of my dad. The death of a ministry. The death of a business. And now it felt like all that death was coming to life. RESURRECTION LIFE!
I picked 6 (you Auburn fans might get that!) people out at Groove Life. Started having lunch with them on Wednesdays. Taught disciple-making principles. Encouraged them to have spiritual conversations at work. And we started seeing fruit. Healthy, delicious fruit!
Over time, it began to spill out of the doorways of Groove Life and into the community. And I felt much like I had been transported back 15 years to that Sunday, lying in the hammock, catching a vision that lit me up and launched me into the mission field.
But This Time I Had a Different Set of Tools
Fifteen years produce a lot of maturity. Growth. Wisdom. Understanding. Humility. Skills. Language. Confidence. Vision. I was a new man with an old dream, and I was fired up and ready to go!
I partnered up with an old friend, Dan Grider, and Ignite Disciple-Making, who gave me a new set of tools and a swift kick in the butt. The pace seemed faster, and the disciple-making pathway seemed richer. And we went from that little lunch meeting to a few hungry disciples. And then from a few hungry disciples to a few humble disciple-making communities.
And now, five years later, we are partnered up with a few other streams of disciple-making through the Disciple Making Collective of Middle Tennessee, and we are tracking 223 people being intentionally discipled, 65 people committed to discipling at least one other person, and 36 active disciple-making groups (52 total since inception).
🚦And we’ve only just begun!
The growth rate has increased exponentially in the past few months as we’ve found some persons of peace in key people groups in Nashville and surrounding towns. It is both exciting and terrifying as we take steps to facilitate more and healthier churches and disciples.
My Missional Re-Birth
I’m not sure when it happened. It feels like a moment in time and a cross-country crawl all at the same time. But somewhere along the way, God gave me something that I couldn’t have manufactured or bought with money. He filled me up with a confidence beyond my understanding. But, it wasn’t a confidence in my own ability. It was a deep conviction and radical trust in His sufficiency. Even in the face of my insufficiency!
We’ve seen literal medically-verified miracles! We’ve seen deeply oppressed individuals, victims of the most vile demonic perpetrators you can think of or imagine, set free. We have seen the most unlikely people come to Jesus. I’ve personally had the honor of helping raise over $3 million in support for faith-based nonprofits that faithfully incorporate the Gospel into their work. I have worked with two large companies to invest deeply in local, gospel-centered work, leveraging the influence and resources of successful businesses for the Kingdom of God.
🎯 AND AGAIN, WE’VE JUST BEGUN!
✔︎ WE NEED YOUR HELP ‼️
Friend! There are many, MANY, blessings I wouldn’t trade for the privilege of seeing what I have seen in this journey toward decentralized disciple-making. Literal miracles, hearts healed, the most unlikely of the most unlikely being baptized and set free, and the joy of knowing that I have given every single part of myself to this mission of advancing the Kingdom of God into the most unlikely places.
REALLY!
I wouldn’t trade it.
HOWEVER, the downside to what my team does is that it is generally not supported by the church system as we know it. I get tons of pats on the back. I get more attagboys than I’d ever need. If I never had another, I’d still be saturated with affirmation. But I don’t get resources. Because what I do doesn’t generally fill pews and bank checks. The people we work with don’t understand or value investing their dollars into “ministry” (whatever that means to them).
People often ask me, “Are you planting a church?” My common answer is that I hope to plant hundreds of churches.
That doesn’t make sense to the institutionally minded person who look for buildings and bands as a measure of “investment worthiness”.
So, we make it work. We pound it out. We find places to office and meet. We keep going when we have to figure it out. There’s no other way for us. It is life, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Whenever the temptation rears its head and I think about getting back to “normal life,” I remember the words of Peter after Jesus barked out that absolutely absurd command to eat his flesh and drink his blood. When many turned away, he looked at the 12 and asked what they were to do.
“Lord, where else would we go?”
In other words, all of creation offers nothing more rich, life-giving, and missionally impactful than walking blindly into the ❤️🔥 unfathomable Love of God ❤️🔥 and His mission to share that with a dark and dying people!
🙏 Lord, Here Am I. Send Me! Would you say the same as we work together to finalize and fulfill the GREAT CO-MISSION❓
So encouraging. The timing perfect. I needed to read this today. Thank you.
Really enjoyed this read!